What Was the Wild West?

What was...?

by Janet B. Pascal, Stephen Marchesi (Illustrations)

Saddle up and get ready for a ride back into the wild and wooly past of the American West.

The west was at its wildest from 1865 to 1895, when territories west of the Mississippi River remained untamed and lawless. Famous for cowboys, American Indians, lawmen, gunslingers, pioneers, and prospectors, this period in US history captures the imagination of all kids and now is brought vividly to life.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Childrens, American History, Chapter Books, Family

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2017

About the author

Janet Pascal, author of many YA biographies and Viking’s senior copy-editor, lives in New York, New York.

Reviews

[Sophie Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a Good read on the Wild West---and easy too. It's Definitely geared towards children anxious to learn about history!

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very nice, quick read. Very clearly geared towards children, but I still learned lots of good stuff. I liked the page that said if you truly want to understand the West, you can't only look at the perspective of those who believed they won the West, but those who lost it, too.
I think it's very sweet that cowboys would sing to the cows :))

[Cecilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book taught me sooooo much! I've never know so much about the Wild West! (Glad the buffalo aren't extinct! :)) It's fascinating to compare the timeline of the Wild West with the timeline of the world. It was a little boring and kinda hard to get through, which made it lose a couple of stars.
All in all, 3 stars for What Was the Wild West? by Janet B. Pascal! As a great person once said, "Even reading a bad book makes an author a better author."

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wild West has as many as sixty buffalo once roamed the prairie. Many cowboys didn’t carry pistols or guns and were not good shots. Also, Cowboys were called beans “whistle berries.” In 1886 a crowd of people gathered around to applaud one of the biggest traveling shows. It even included real cowboys! Soon people saw the story of the West was won. Indians hunted buffalo and bandits attacked an actual stagecoach. Buffalo Bill Cody who ran the show was a Wild West hero. He rode a horse over to the prairie for the pony express mail service. He scouted in the Indian wars. The show was very popular and lots of people enjoyed it. The Indians who were living at the Wild West didn’t think it was wild because it was their home. In the Wild West they didn’t think they could let a single man own a land by himself they say all of the land belongs to everybody. The Wild West was untamed and untouched by civilization. They made houses with wood and chopped down many trees. Soon Native Americans decided to move West so their civilization was pushed into a smaller and smaller space. Soon the Wild West became an often violent place. Sometimes the two cultures cooperated by trading goods but then as the farmland filled up, the cultures clashed more often. With the Native Americans taking the Indians land they were forced to move farther and farther west. At the end of this book bloody wars broke out between the Indians and the West. The Indians were eager to keep their land but the West kept on stealing their land. Will the Indians ever get their land back!? Find out in What was the Wild West!!!

[Stacy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a fairly interesting book about the Wild West being settled. This book covered how a log cabin was built, the Oregon Trail, shoot outs in the prairie, the importance of buffalo to the Indians and why the US government wanted it’s citizens to kill them off, gold fever which turned into boom towns, the Homestead Act, ghost towns, and stolen land from the Indians.

HOWEVER....
I also wanted to point out that if you are giving this book to a child to read BEWARE that in chapter 5 titled, “Shoot - Outs on the Prairie”, this is what appears in the first paragraph:
“Prairie towns where the cattle drives ended were very tough places. They were full of hustlers, gamblers, and prostitutes hoping to make money from the cowboys.”

I, personally, do not think this is appropriate to be putting in a children’s book! I am so glad I was reading this to my 3rd grade son as I caught it before I read it and skipped over it. I just wanted to let anyone who is also concerned about this to be aware of it! And for this reason, my stars have dropped way down.

[Erin Becker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as bad as I expected but still definitely not great. The good:

1) acknowledged and named Black settlers, cowboys, and lawmen
2) discussed multiple specific Native Nations and their different histories during the time period covered
3) acknowledged the theft of "the west"

The bad:
1) consistently used words like "fierce' and "bloody" when describing conflicts and battles between settlers and Native Nations
2) didn't acknowledge even a tiny bit the continuous existence of Native peoples
3) portrayed Bill Cody as an "authentic wild West hero"?!?!

Oh balance it was decent but could have been a lot better. Not the best resource for teaching kids about Westward Expansion, the frontier, etc. Won't be using this one with my kid.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

What Was the Wild West by Janet B. Pascal does a pretty good job of providing the background and motivations for European and other whites to constantly move west and displacing the American Indians. Treaties were made over and over between whites and Indians and then they were almost always broken by the whites in pursuit of more land or gold. This repeatedly resulted in clashes and often escalating to outright war. From reading other books on this topic this book is a fast and accurate read about how the west was won and lost.

[Kasey S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice Overview

I love these kids books for my students. This one I wanted to read for me because I’ve been waiting for Old West figures to be written about. This was a nice overview of the entire era. I would’ve like a little more detail about famous figures and places. Each was only mentioned once with a paragraph or two. I hope more of these books follow with Who Was Wyatt Earp, or Where Was Tombstone.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

It goes over the history of the wild west. It covers treaties with the Indians that the government didn't keep their promise, trails of tears, famous cowboys, lifestyles of different time periods during the wild west, different jobs, different Indian tribes, buffalo, Pony Express, pioneer (immigrants, blacks, forty-niners, etc), railroad (Chinese and Irish workers), etc.

[Kevin Souza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book because it was fascinating read about the wild west and what happened and about the Cowboys and the gangs and all the pictures in the book like pictures of your head,it tells you about the Oregon Trail in different towns that they were in in the timelines and the Gold Fever and boom towns and then they also shows you how the laws were made in the best Wild West shooters.

[Tannet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read reviews

I am writing a good read review on the Wild West

The Wild West is a good book it talks about old Texas.

It also has a lot of facts and made me have a new perspective of coy boys i thought coy boys were people who lived off of coys I did not know that coy boys are the front live in a battle It surprised me a lot

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reader of this book will learn how the frontier evolved over the years, transforming from a forested area in Kentucky to the Great Plains. Many discoveries and inventions contributed to this historic transformation of the United States. The book was quite interesting, and several unmentioned points of history will be discovered.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The west was at its wildest from 1865 to 1895, when territories west of the Mississippi River remained untamed and lawless. Famous for cowboys, American Indians, lawmen, gunslingers, pioneers, and prospectors, this period in US history.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fun read for my second grade class. They loved learning all about the Wild West. It was a great follow up read after teaching my class about the revolutionary war, the Louisiana purchase, and the the Lewis and Clark expedition.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this while traveling home from S.Dakota trip. Very informative and interesting as the info was fresh on our minds. We all learned a lot. It includes historical info of the Native American experience in US History.

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked it

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked it

[Shahd Rdawi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dafinaltely would go back read it over again! The whole diversity community of the new world which known as America story in a hundred pages !!

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected, but interesting.

[Dana Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty solid history of the Western US, but sometimes insufficiently critical of US government actions against Native Americans.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

So basically, a lot of things we see on television in the "wild west" was untrue, imagine that.

[ضحى باعقيل · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected the topic to be more interesting.

[Sondra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview. Lots of little tidbits of information.

[Suzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book did a great job of showing both sides of the history of the “Wild West.”

[Andrei · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick primer on Wild West. Some popular words and phrases make sense now.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of information!

[Alex Kudera · Rating 5 out of 5]

another classic of the genre

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Musical books" choice. Quick and informative, covers quite a lot of topics in a very brief way.

[Jane A. R. Page · Rating 1 out of 5]

“The West was not “won,” it was stolen. It was their home, and the settlers were cheating outsiders who broke every promise they made.”
- What was the Wild West by Janet B. Pascal

Um... thanks.

“The West was not “won,” it was stolen.”

Ouch.

Last time I checked, this took place more than a hundred forty-nine years ago. My past ancestors, history, and heroes were destroyed in this book. Yes, I think we need to consider the promises we make and KEEP them, but this is history. No one should act and try to be the judge when they weren’t there themselves. This is some of my favorite history. The Wild West is how I got to know my grandparents, laugh over the movies and, memorably, watch Gun-smoke. I know I’m being negative, but please don’t try to strip me of all my pride. I’m happy I live where I live. But I am most certainly thankful that the Wild West happened.

Is it wrong for me to love my home and my history? I don’t think so, but I do regret our breaking of promises- then again- it’s not my place to regret. I wasn’t there.

[Deanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

One word: “prostitute”
How do I explain what that is when my students ask (and they will)? How do I explain to parents why my students are learning about prostitutes trying to “make money off cowboys?”
Other this, I like the book, but this is simply inappropriate for the age level.